Her heart feels jagged and aching.
She lies still in her bed, flat on her back with her eyes on the ceiling, hurting too much to move even if she had the desire to. She's furious at everyone - the dragon, the sniper who shot her, the mysterious voice on the phone known as 'Smith', Castle. Herself.
Investigating her own shooting has been her top priority since she woke in that hospital bed with a hole in her chest, but since Castle… her priorities have done some shifting. He's managed to edge out everything else for the highest spot on that list.
She doesn't want to put on blinders and run headfirst into danger this time, it wasn't what she wanted before he arrived on her doorstep tonight and that hasn't changed. She wants to do it right, wants to keep him safe, but he's too busy trying to do the same for her.
She's surprised, actually, and so damn grateful, that he didn't take part in Smith's deal, that he came to her with the truth. He deserves credit for that and she'll give it.
When she's not so pissed.
Even though it's not his fault.
Kate sighs, covers her face with her hands and expels a deep breath from beneath her palms.
She doesn't want to play this game of puppet, to appease this deal she's had no say in. Her instinct is to run straight into war with these bastards, bring them to their knees for all they've done to her, to those she loved. But Castle is right about one thing - they will kill her.
Alexis's words ring out through her head.
They'll kill you both.
Kate sits up in the bed, swings her legs over the side, and runs a hand through her hair. If anything happened to Castle… no, she can't. She's resilient, a survivor, but she won't come out alive from that.
Her scar simmers with warning as she pushes too fast out of the bed, swaying a little on her feet before she can continue out of her room and down the hall. He sits at the kitchen table, fingers interlaced and curled into fists with his forehead propped against his knuckles. His eyes are closed and his shoulders are wrought with tension.
She brings him so much tension. He's a good man, has a beautiful heart, and she so badly wants to be deserving of all he has to give. She wants to be worth it, she wants to be more. More than her mother's murder, more than a gunshot victim, more than a conspiracy that's bound to get her killed.
She wants to love him.
Kate holds her breath as she crosses the living room to reach him, pads silently into the kitchen to stand beside him.
"I don't feel differently." His head lifts, tired eyes seeking her out in the soft light. "I won't lose you either. I can't."
He sits up in the wooden chair, reaches for her hand. She comes before he has to apply any pressure, slips into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck. His forehead seals against her sternum, the heavy exhale he releases fluttering hot across the slopes of her breasts.
Kate touches her lips to his crown, her nose in his hair, and closes her eyes.
"I love you," she whispers. "So much, Castle."
His breath catches at her chest. But it doesn't scare her as much as she once thought it would to say the words aloud. They've been on the tip of her tongue for so long now, it only feels natural to let them free.
Rick lifts his head, stares up at her like he's wonderstruck. He has to have known, though, has to have felt it in the way she looks at him, touches him.
"I love you too, Kate," he murmurs, one of his hands rising to cradle her cheek. She bows her head to meet his, breathes through the gentle stutter of her heart. "And about Smith-"
"No," she sighs, pleads. "Not now, Castle. Just - I love you, I can finally say it, and I don't want that ruined by anything else."
His lips quirk and he nods, strokes his thumb along the slash of her cheekbone. "Okay. Enough for tonight."
"Of that, yes." She nudges her nose to his, dusts her lips along the corner of his mouth.
His brow lifts, but he doesn't make any move to deny her.
"Kate," he murmurs, his hand migrating to her hair, submerging in the locks. His palm cradles her skull, but his fingers twist through the mess of waves.
"Hmm?" She grazes her lips to the stubble of his jaw, lingers there.
"I - I think you know how badly I want you." Her insides quiver with heat, wanting of her own. She doesn't think he truly understands how mutual it is, how it always has been. How much she's wanted him, how long. "So, if you need more time, I understand, but-"
She straightens in his lap. "No, I - no more time. No more waiting."
Kate drapes her palms at the sides of his throat, feels the race of his pulse beneath the heels of her hands. He's watching her with eyes that are liquid with arousal, pools of midnight blue. It isn't an unfamiliar look, one she's been on the receiving end of many times in the last few weeks. It spills fire through her insides every time.
"All I could think about after therapy today was how much better I've been feeling," she murmurs, feeling his throat work through a swallow beneath her fingers. "How ready."
"Yeah?" he asks, the heat in his gaze still present, but the spread of his lips is soft, proud.
"Yeah, and now, after today, after spending the last few hours thinking about my mom, my shooting, everything that comes with it, I'm sure about what I want." His head tilts in question, as if the answer isn't obvious. She sighs, brushes her thumb along his bottom lip. "I just want you, Castle. Everything else is secondary."
Disbelief flashes through his eyes, spreading through his features, before the love he so proudly wears for her these days follows, settles in. She leans forward, presses her lips to his smile, feels the hand at her waist squeeze. And then he's wrapping both arms around her in an embrace, hugging her so tight that she forgets about the scars marring her skin, stretched taut beneath the pressure.
He loosens his hold as they part for breath, his head falling to her shoulder and his lips skating along the exposed edge of her collarbone. She furrows her fingers through his hair, bridges them at his nape as his head lifts.
"Kate, I don't want you to feel like it's an ultimatum. That wasn't what I was trying to say earlier, I just-"
"I know you weren't," she nods, easing back with her hands slipping to catch on the fabric of his shirt. "But I do have to choose. That's - it's actually one of the things Alexis and I talked about." Her eyes descend to the safe zone of his chin. "We all know that until the Dragon is slain, my connection to my mother's case is elastic. It'll always come back to me and I'll never let it go." She risks a glance at him, but he doesn't look disappointed. He listens with rapt attention, with knowledge and understanding, but no judgement. "But I can pick and choose my battles, choose to put other things first, stop trying to - to die for my cause."
Guilt flashes across his face.
"Kate-"
"I don't want to die, Castle. I don't want anyone I care about to die. Not because of this." She shakes her head, shuts her eyes for a moment. "If I lose anyone else to this, if I lost you-"
"Okay," he quiets her, clutching the back of her neck. "I'm not going anywhere."
She nods, peels her eyes open to find him staring back at her with concern. But she doesn't want that look, she wants the arousal back in his gaze, wants to see the need she feels churning through the pit of her stomach reflected there.
"I told Alexis I would always choose you," she reveals, watching the result of that statement ripple through his features, his jaw falling slack. "And I meant it."
Castle squeezes her neck once more before he rises to kiss her, sealing his mouth to hers for the first time in a week.
"Say it again," he mumbles, his lips tripping against hers with the words. She has to blink to comprehend them, to think past the sparks of electricity spreading from where he touches her.
"Which part, Castle? I said a lot in the last few minutes," she mutters, catching his bottom lip between her teeth. She just poured her heart out to him, left it strewn all over his lap and the kitchen table; she doesn't have it in her to say any more.
He growls and she wonders if he's figured out in this past month just how much that sound turns her on. He must have, because he's grinning as she shifts in his lap, rubs her thighs together to alleviate the growing need for friction.
He chuckles and she squirms against him for it, wiggles her ass in his lap. His fingers clench hard enough to bruise around her hipbone, the moan in his throat low and slipping free.
Castle strays from her mouth to paint his lips along her jaw, teasing her with the brushstrokes of his tongue. He pauses when his lips reach her ear.
"The best part."
It only takes her a moment to figure it out, to remember.
She hums. "I love you?"
His lips part over the taut skin below her jaw, tongue laving hard, teeth scraping flesh. Kate bows forward, curls her fingers around his ears.
"Again."
She huffs at the rumble of words against her throat, rises from his lap to ease one leg over his thighs. He growls again, in approval this time, and nuzzles his way down her throat. Her heart is fluttering in her chest, tickling beneath the healed tissue of her scar, wings beating fast when his hands slide beneath her shirt, converge at the small of her back.
His palms are broad, spanning the base of her spine and branding her flesh. The moan builds in her throat, escapes past her lips in a whimper as her hips roll forward.
"I love you."
His nose nudges the top button of her shirt, the disc sliding free, and then his mouth is traipsing down the bones of her sternum, finding home between her breasts. She gasps, clutches his shoulders at the heat of his breath staining the puckered flesh of her bullet wound.
He draws back to see the spot, one of his hands slipping from her back, glancing along her ribs to locate her incision scar.
"Do they hurt at all?" His voice is a husk, his eyes riveted to the gunshot's entry wound. His thumb sweeps along the scar between her ribs, where the scalpel sliced her open and gloved hands dug inside her. She almost expects the ghost of pain to flare, but there's nothing but heat beneath his fingertips.
"No," she whispers, lowering one of her hands to collide with his at her side. She guides their tangled fingers from beneath her shirt, drags his hand up to rest between her breasts, and cradles the pressure of his fingers there with hers.
Castle lifts his head, tilts forward just enough to dust his lips over her mouth. She sighs at the caress of his mouth, squeezes his fingers once before letting go to stroke hers down his cheek. He kisses her slow, gentle, such an aching tenderness that overwhelms her, makes his hand at her chest the only thing keeping her heart from bursting free.
"Castle." His lashes rise, nearly graze hers in their ascent. She's never been this close before and yet, somehow, she still doesn't feel close enough, still wants so much more. "I love you."
He looks mesmerized, intoxicated, but so sharp with need. Her thighs squeeze at his hips.
"Now take me to bed."